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Instrument Priorities Survey 2004

The Magellan Council has requested that the SAC ... prioritize the instruments on the basis of absolute science and science return per dollar. The SAC shall consult a wide community of users before making their ranking.

To do this, we ask each institution's Magellan community to confer and place instruments into categories of HIGH, MEDIUM, and LOW based on absolute science value. We leave it up to the gathered groups to define "absolute science." Please use the full range HIGH-LOW. Rankings on science per dollar will require discussion at the next meeting.

Only candidate facility instruments are considered here, not user instruments. Some proposed instruments have presentation material from the last SAC meeting. IMACS is split between F/2 and F/4 modes because this swap is similar to an instrument change. For LDSS, consider the upgraded version as described in the on-line documentation.

Except for LDSS, please base your rankings on the state of things today and avoid conditionals (don't say "if FourStar then PANIC=low else PANIC=high").

One SAC member from each institution: please submit your results by email to <au AT ociw DOT edu> on or before September 24, 2004.

Absolute science (H|M|L)

Instrument Carnegie Harvard Arizona Michigan MIT
MagIC L M M M H
PANIC H M H/M M H
IMACS spectrograph F/2 H H H H HH
IMACS spectrograph F/4 H M H H H
MIKE H M H H H
MIKE FIBERS L M H H/M L
B&C L M L M LL
LDSS upgraded multiobject optical spectrograph H M M H M
Infrared echellette M M H L H
FourStar wide field IR imager H H H L H
MagE optical echellette L M L L H
IMACS gismo (image slicing multislit front-end) M L M/L L M/L
MMIRS multiobject IR spectrograph M M M/L M M
Megacam Optical wide field imager M M L L M
IMACS MMTF tunable filter imager M M M/L L L
IMACS multiobject echellette L M M L L
F/11 adaptive optics secondary M M H L M
MIRAC4 with F/11 AO secondary L M H L ?
MIRAC4 without F/11 AO secondary L L M/L L ?

 

Links to comments from:

Results of instrument priorities poll

The averaged scores (3=High, 2=Medium, 1=Low), giving each Magellan partner equal weight*, are shown in this table:

 

Instrument Score
IMACS F/2 3.0
IMACS F/4 2.8
MIKE 2.8
FourStar 2.6
PANIC 2.5
LDSS 2.4
FIRE 2.2
MagIC 2.0
F/11 AO 2.0
MMIRS 1.9
MIKE Fibers 1.9
MIRAC4 with AO 1.8
Megacam 1.6
MagE 1.6
MMTF 1.5
GISMO 1.4
MOE 1.4
B&C 1.4
MIRAC4 without AO 1.1

* MIT did not answer on MIRAC4; results averaged on remaining four.